


The Day Freddie Died

by aactionjohnny



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 03:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19433068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aactionjohnny/pseuds/aactionjohnny
Summary: Aziraphale tries to comfort Crowley after the death of Freddie Mercury.





	The Day Freddie Died

**Author's Note:**

> As inspired by episode 3 of the tv adaptation, I love historically contextualizing different points in their relationship. This time, the end of the Cold War and the fallout of the AIDS crisis. 
> 
> Title based on the poem “The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara.

November, 1991. As if the world were not being knocked down and rebuilt and turned upside down enough as it was, by the end of the month, Crowley crumbled harder than the Berlin Wall. Head office had been disappointed; they wanted the Cold War to last forever. The fear of nuclear annihilation was a hotbed for temptation. But the Wall came down, that stony symbol, and with it did their ambition for the end of the world. Maybe next time.

He knew it was coming, but he was too much a coward to be at his bedside. For all the death he’d seen, for all the death he’d  _ caused _ , still the sight of a sweet, withered man dying in a bed was too harsh for his evil heart. And he knew he shouldn’t complain about how  _ unfair _ it was, how  _ cruel _ , that a man who brought the world such beautiful music and pure joy should die young. The world was unfair and cruel, and it was his job to keep it that way. So instead of visiting, instead of holding his bony hand and saying goodbye and thank-you, Crowley stayed holed up in his London apartment, in the dark, with a bottle of gin, feeling as though his record collection was staring at him from the corner. Without even the motivation to terrorize his makeshift greenhouse, he sat slumped at his desk and drank. 

And then, he could feel it. He felt a life leave the world. He rested his forehead on his desk and sighed. Freddie was gone. And isn’t it their fault? Tempting rock stars to fuck and shoot up and live as if they’re dying? Crowley and his comrades are purveyors of disease and torment, surely it was their best accomplishment to unleash a virus so incurable and torturous. Some zealots claimed it was the work of God, punishing people for sin. But Crowley knew God had nothing to do with it save for turning Her blind eye to it.

“Shit,” he mumbled, turning his head to the left, looking down his long, dark hallway. At the end of it there lay a safe containing a clean plastic thermos. At times it seemed to beckon him. A temptation all its own.

He heard the distinct sound of a key turning in a lock, and he lifted his head. His stringy hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks, and he did his best to smooth it out, as if there were any way for him to look presentable in his current state. Puffy from trying not to cry and succeeding to get drunk, his yellow eyes burning like an angry sun.

“Who’s there?” he asked, slurred and lazy. From the shadow of the doorway, a vision. No, something real, something familiar. A glowing white angel, hands timidly wringing and a sorrowful smile on his face. “Aziraphale…”

“Afraid so,” Aziraphale said, slowly approaching. Crowley spun his chair around to see him more clearly. He rubbed his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” He despised how unpleased he sounded. Always he was being so cruel to him.

“...thought you might, um…” He snapped his fingers, summoning a chair from the corner, and sat down across from him. “I heard the news about your friend. I know how you loved his music—“

“Still do.  _ Love _ it,” he corrected, spiteful, too mean. “Sorry, Angel, I’m just…” He learned forward, elbows on his knees, and buried his head in his hands.

“You know, I’ve...lost friends. From the same illness.” His voice seemed to flutter like moth’s wings, fragile and light. “If you want to talk…”

“Fuck’s sake, Aziraphale, what’s there to talk about?” he spat.

“...very well. You don’t have to.” 

Crowley hated himself, then. Acting as if no one could understand how he felt, even though Aziraphale was flatout saying he  _ did _ . He’d lost  _ friends _ , plural. He’d no doubt sat alone in dark rooms, drunk, full of regret, and alone, and Crowley hadn’t ever come to comfort him. Not once. 

“It’s not my doing,” Crowley promised. “We did the Black Plague and whatnot, not this.”

“I know,” Aziraphale assured him. And then, he feels a hand on his knee. An awkward reassurance, but welcome, even if he’d never say so. “Near the end, most of them just end up blaming God, anyway. Or themselves.”

And Crowley would never know what Freddie had said at the end. Because he wasn’t there. Just as he’d never been there for Aziraphale in his sorrow. He was there for no one but himself. There for the gin, and the dark rooms, and the guilt and the anger.

“Angel…” His voice cracked. “Fuck, Angel, he was brilliant…” And, like a child, he sobbed, seeming to collapse in on himself. He so rarely cried. He can count the times on one hand. Once, when he watched a child drowning in the flood. Again, when he’d thought up the idea for Aziraphale to give him holy water. And again, once he’d gotten it, and the angel got out of his car and walked away, and he wondered if he’d ever come back.

“Oh, dear—“ Aziraphale murmured, standing from his chair, leaning forward to wrap his arms around Crowley’s shaking shoulders. “It’s such a shame…”

He felt a gentle hand atop his head, brushing down the soft curls, cradling his skull against that warm and welcoming chest as if it were made of glass. Wasn’t it? For all his boasting, Crowley was delicate as paper.

“What do you do?” he asked, muffled against the starched fabric of Aziraphale’s vest. “How do you...deal with it? Losing someone like that?”

They’d been alive for so long. They’d lost friends here and there, of course. And somehow it just got harder each time.

Aziraphale backed up some, tilting Crowley’s chin up, and then took his tear-soaked face in his hands.

“You remember them. You...try to take away the shame of what killed them. And you put on his records, my dear. Wouldn’t he want that?”

His lips trembled. 

“I’m not ready to hear him sing just yet,” Crowley admits.

“I understand.”

Aziraphale bids him to stand, lifting him by the arms into a further embrace. 

For a while they stand, silent and swaying, and Crowley isn’t sure whether to blame his dizziness on the gin or the strange elation he feels. As if absolved and cured by affection and comfort. 

“I’m drunk,” he said, regretful, burying his face in Aziraphale’s hair. Always so soft and pillowy. And smelling fresh and clean. He’d always thought so and never said it out loud.

“Do you want to sober up?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley nodded. “Just hold still, dear.”

And then, angelic hands pressed to his back, he felt the clarity slowly ease back into him, felt the poison leave his blood and the fog leave his head. 

“Ah…thank you, Angel.” They didn’t need to touch any longer, but he only held him tighter. “It’s been so long, I’m sorry. I’m...I’m so sorry I’ve not been by.”

“Busy world, these days, Crowley.”

“Now that things are a little less tense, maybe we can...I don’t know, take a break,” he suggested. “Go to America. Or somewhere.”

“That’s where many of my friends died, Crowley.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Stop that.”

Aziraphale put on some tea, once he had Crowley comfortable situated on the leather couch with a soft blanket over his shoulders. They discussed where they might go on their little vacation.

“It’s so cold this time of year,” Aziraphale noted. “Maybe we should go someplace warm. Near the ocean. I promise not to walk on water or anything.”

“You’ve never been a showoff,” Crowley said. “No matter where we go, there’s going to be people in trouble, who need some  _ divine intervention _ , and you won’t be able to help yourself.”

“Now, now…” But he could offer no rebuttal.

“Just...let’s stay here. Stay with me for a bit.”

The sound of teacups clinking on a tray, the sound of hot liquid being poured.

“Stay with you?”

Crowley nodded.

“You said I go too fast. I...I want to slow down, Angel.”

“Slow...down?”

Crowley stood, taking the blanket with him, keeping it around his shoulders. Perhaps it was just nerves that made him chilly at that point, but he felt he needed it, like it could protect him from his own tenderness and fragility.

“Tired of running into you every thirty years or so, Angel,” he admitted. 

“Oh, Crowley…”

Crowley wrapped the blanket around both of them, hiding them beneath it like a heavy pair of protecting wings. He could hear their breath, shaky and slow.

“Is it stupid to need you, Angel?” he asked, thankful to be hidden beneath the blanket.

“Maybe,” he answered, with some unmistakable cheer in his voice. “I suppose head office would say so—“

“Fuck head office. Our friends are dead. If the Cold War can end—“

“Then maybe I can stay with you a while?”

“Nothing’s impossible, Angel. Think we’ve proven that.”

Their tea went cold. They sat on the couch, curled into one another, sharing stories of the brilliant lives that they’d lost over the years. Crowley was so thankful that he could live forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale said fuck Ronald Reagan 
> 
> I love crying,
> 
> Comments always make my day, hope you enjoyed!!
> 
> Might do more historical fics because I’m nerd baby.


End file.
